Worker-owned enterprises may contribute to the development of a new system of productive relations in the United States. Various approaches to employee ownership are classified into two principal schemes. Type I methods include the Scanlon plan, Drucker's logic of "pension fund socialism," and Kelso's Employee Stock Ownership Plan. 7hese designs coalesce in efforts to preserve capitalism by broadening its rewards, retaining the traditional profit motive, and remaining within the confines of traditional role relationships between management and employees. Type II alternatives include new business collectives founded in an ideological commitment to cooperative action, company-takeovers by employees, and worker/community owned firms. Comparisons are made between the two principal typologies with respect to selected criteria.
This article examines the impact on women's employment of the changing demographic structure of the family. Using log linear techniques and data from the 1960 and 1970 censuses, our findings modify earlier research and have implications for the future. Key findings include a decline in the effect of marital status on women's employment; no decline in the effect of child status; a more complicated relationship between race and employment status than previously realized; and clear evidence that rates are increasing not only because of changes in family structure, but because of changes in the employment patterns of successive cohorts of women.
Contrary to Granovetter's hypothesis that salient job information derives from "weak ties" (acquaintances), this study of 299 social and physical scientists at one Canadian and one U.S. university reveals that "strong ties" (intimates) were approximately seven times more prevalent than "weak ties." Furthermore, with only one exception (U.S. graduates who obtained Canadian academic positions), the reliance on "weak ties" for job information declined from 1920 to 1978. Although a greater amount of job information can be obtained through weak ties, the problem is to locate only the few openings for which one would be seriously considered and would consider accepting. Long lists of undesirable unobtainable positions are of little interest. Thus, it is more efficient to rely on a few intimate colleagues (strong ties) in seeking employment.
Data from 525 professionals and semiprofessionals are used to test the hypothesis that one's sex is more salient than occupational competencies for persons in opposite-sex- dominated occupations. The impact of these characteristics on a global measure of self-esteem is used as an indicator of their relative salience. The hypothesis is supported in that sex is quite important for all respondents, while occupational competencies are important only for those in same-sex-dominated occupations (professional men and semiprofessional women). This finding is interpreted in a symbolic interactionist framework. Assuming that the salience of various self components is determined by the feedback one receivesfrom significant others, thesefindings suggest that opposite-sex colleagues tend to ignore or downplay occupational competencies in lieu of one's sex. Possible implications for the career success of those in opposite-sex-dominated occupations are discussed. Also discussed are more general implications for self-development theory.
In contrast to previous work, our study considers both meaning and mediation factors in the achievement-aspiration relationship. In a sample of graduate students ("academic-career aspirants"), we examine sex differences in the achievement- aspiration relationship as they vary with type of academic achievement and professional aspirations, and as it is mediated by individuals' perceptions of their professional roles and their faculty's support. We find: (1) Women's achievement-aspiration conversion is different from, but not necessarily lower than, men's. Rather, the strength and direction of the relationship vary with aspiration type (traditional versus alternative) and, to some extent, with specific types of academic achievement (e.g., paper publication and GPA). (2) The mediators of the achievement-aspiration relationship also vary by sex and aspiration type. Notably, women's aspirations for traditional career rewards are largely a function of their perceptions of the structural availability of job opportunity.
This panel study examines the interrelations of work experience and psychological involvement in work among male college graduates over a 10-year period. The data analysis provides substantial support for the "occupational socialization hypothesis"—that work experience and, particularly, work autonomy, stimulate work involvement over time. There was also evidence for the "occupational selection hypothesis"— that high work involvement, prior to labor force entry, induces work values which promote stability m the early career and facilitates the attainment of income and work autonomy.
This article reports a study of aggregate unit salary levels, within a major research university. We analyze these salary levels, as they are influenced by unit sex composition, and modified by unit attainment levels—where unit refers to the departments, colleges and schools, and other academic divisions of the university. We investigate three central issues of sex and salary, previously overlooked in salary studies of academic employees: Do high proportions of women depress men's unit salary levels ("competition" hypothesis)? Are women's salary levels higher in male-dominated, and lower in female-dominated, units ("concentration" hypothesis)? Are men salary-compensated for working with women ("compensation" hypothesis)? The findings support none of these hypotheses. Rather, the relationship between unit sex composition and salary rests upon the connection between units' composition and attainment levels.
Past work has shown that professionals have different patterns of interpersonal contacts in different settings. Verbal defining constitutes one unstudied aspect ofsuch contacts. This article uses certam attributes of a juvenile court setting to formulate hypotheses on the relative importance of 6 measures of professional identity and 10 kinds of defining. Pearson and canonical correlations support 14 of the 16 hypotheses in that juvenile court. These results point to the utility of a situational approach to professional identity and defining.
This article examines the intergenerational covariation in detailed aspects of occupational roles. Occupations are conceptualized and measured on the basis of indicators for role requirements, content, and rewards. The detailed components are thought to underlie overall role characterizations such as socioeconomic status transmission. Data pertain to a national sample of male members of the civilian labor force and to a countywide sample of high school males. Canonical correlation analyses for two role relationships, involving parent occupation, early career occupation, and late adolescent occupational aspirations, show: (1) role transmission occurs for a multiplicity of occupational characteristics that span the requirements, content, and rewards of roles; (2) the two role relation ships are not isomorphic in their structure; (3) support for recent arguments that complexity of roles is a key organizing feature of role transmission processes; and (4) mixed support for recent research on patterns of intergenerational occupational movement.
This article describes a unique system of self-management, the Breman system, that has developed in the Netherlands. Arising in a small village in the north of Holland, the Breman system has been relatively insulatedfrom the influence of other international models of worker particpation, and as a result, has developed some novel social innovations to achieve its ends. Since its conversion in 1972from an ordinary family-owned corporation to a self-managed system, it has shown an impressive capacity for financial growth, organizational productivity, and worker satisfaction. The last section of this article draws out some of the lessons of the Breman experience for democratizing enterprises in other capitalist settings such as the United States.
The article uses a single theoretical framework to analyze the development of participatory organizational forms. The histories of decision-making structures are considered in terms of the structural sources of decision-making power within organizations and supraorganizational networks. The dialectic of power at the points of production and managerial planning lead to distinct forms of authority and structures of workforce participation in the decision-making process. Structural linkages between forms of industrial organization, ownership, and development and growth of corporate structure and workforce participation in decision-making are the central issues examined. Principal conclusions of the analysis are that collective bargaining, as developed within capitalism, is a form of workers' participation and that worker ownership is a necessary but not sufficient condition of workers' control.
Based on data from 80 Catholic dioceses, the distribution of control in these organizations is primarily affected by the bishop's progressivism and to a lesser extent by the local religious composition. The size of the diocese and characteristics of its clergy had no effect on the control structure. Based on the responses of almost 3000 Catholic priests, individual differences m the perception of a diocese's control structure are only slightly affected by the priest's rank, theological modernity, professionalism, seniority, or discontent. Organization's control structure as measured by the aggregate report of the organization's members is the best predictor of the individual's perception.
Mounting alienation and dissatisfaction at the workplace have prompted a search for new forms of work organization. Two recent initiatives—improvement of the work itself and employee participation—are linked m a model and examined empirically. The effects of work and expanded employee participation m decision making on employee outcomes are examined in 20 organizations. Data are obtained from field observations, company documents, and questionnaires given to 1000 employees from senior management, supervisory, and rank-and-file levels. The nature of work and employee participation have significant, independent effects on employee outcomes. The role of expanded employee participation m decision making when technological or economic constraints limit opportunities for participation is discussed.
While Chinese experiments with participative management practices in industry comprise perhaps the most radical and massive such effort in the modern world, they are still among the least understood in the West. The present article is an effort to define more clearly the boundaries of worker participation in China and the limits of worker control. Through brief, but strategic comparisons with forms of worker control in different political and economic settings, and through critical scrutiny of the various participative forms employed in China, this article attempts to sketch out the configuration of participation and control in Chinese collective forms, and to place them in a broader context of organizations exhibiting "collectivist-democratic" features. We offer (1) an examination of the political considerations which have shaped these experiments; (2) an account of Party organization and how its control is exercised; (3) an outline of the limits on worker control imposed by China's industrial planning system; and (4) a description and critical analysis of the major participative forms employed in Chinese industry from 1956 to the present.
This analysis of job satisfaction and job commitment of some Nigerian workers is guided by the action frame of reference developed by Goldthorpe, because of its emphasis on individual choice within the constraints of the social structure. Workers' wants and expectations as derived from their non-work spheres are thus used as important parameters of attitudes to factory employment. The data clearly demon strate how the individual manipulates his or her interests between the different sectors of the economy, with high rates of satisfaction with factory employment that helps to resolve immediate economic problems and provides inputs toward subsequent careers identified outside the manufacturing sector. The resultant instrumentalism of the worker is traced to the structural conditions of a rapidly changing neocolonial society, the high rates of unemployment, and persistent inflation. Low commitment to the factory, on the other hand, is explained in terms of the improved opportunities perceived in the informal sector and in professional and administrative employment.
This article suggests the importance of connecting work environment issues with concerns of worker control. In particular, some of the legislative reform efforts in Norway and Sweden are outlined with an analysis of current developments in the United States. Whereas there are limited advances in democratizing the workplace head-on, there are considerable achievements illustrated whereby laws and policies have advanced worker control over technology, production, and work processes through a work environment reform strategy.
This study investigates the effect of job satisfaction on general life adjustment of a sample of North American immigrants in Israel. The results reveal a conditional relationship: that life adjustment is a function of work satisfaction among migrants, unless there is a lack of work commitment, or if there exists an alternative life commitment, such as religious identity. The interpretation offered is that when work is important to a person or in the absence of an alternative commitment, such as religion, to offset the importance of work, then job satisfaction can affect the general adaptation of migrants.
Multiple Classification Analyses on responses from 946 white women, drawn from the 1972 American National Election Study survey, were used to test the "frustrated homemaker hypothesis" that full-time homemakers are more dissatisfied with their lives than women employed outside the home. The fit between actual and desired roles proved to be a better predictor of personal satisfaction than the traditional dichotomy between homemakers and employed women. Homemakers who had wanted a career were more personally dissatisfied than homemakers who had never wanted a career. The career-oriented homemakers were the ones who expressed greater personal dissatisfaction than employed women. Employed women and career-oriented homemakers were about equally critical of women's collective position in society, while homemakers who had never wanted a career were more accepting of women's status quo. The importance of including evaluations of both personal and collective well-being was shown by the fact that these two domains bore different relationships to employment-homemaker status.
